


Double Jeopardy

by girloftheq (qthelights)



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-01
Updated: 2007-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 07:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qthelights/pseuds/girloftheq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two ways Rory's life could go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Jeopardy

_The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action._

**John Dewey (1859 - 1952)**

***

When she arrives back from Yale, late on a Friday night, Jess is waiting for her at the door. He pretends he hasn’t been checking the window for her car pulling in at the curb.

He lets her set her bags down and asks how the trip was before he pulls her into his arms. Smiles and says _hi_ before kissing her, drinking her in as if he hasn’t seen her in years. The catcalls in the background make him grin and order the boys out so he can have the evening with his girl.

He orders her pizza that they eat in bed watching CNN. She concentrates on the issues and he mocks the crinkly frown she gets when she’s fed up with the world. When particularly riveted she forgets the pizza in her hand, he ducks when she waves it erratically in protest at right-wing propaganda. 

He can never make it through a story without touching her. Reassuring himself that she’s there, touching her arm or rubbing her back. Fingers tangling in the curls of her hair as he gently rubs her neck.

They make love in the flickering blue of the television. When she comes she’s biting on his fingers and he tastes like pepperoni.

***

She unlocks the door to their apartment and finds it darkened and empty. A message on her cell lets her know that Logan is out with Finn and Colin. She leaves her books on the bed and gets something to drink.

Half an hour later Logan lets himself in and smiles when he finds her reading, curled up in a chair. _Hi, Ace._ He needles her into coming out to dinner with the boys. She grabs her coat and abandons the book. Dinner is expensive and the food is mouth-wateringly good. Finn is in high spirits and tells tall tales in-between hitting on the waitresses. Logan leaves his hand on her thigh during dinner. Sometime around dessert his hand moves further up.

The lot of them wander, tipsily, through the streets from bar to bar. Her ears are ringing with their laughter and her cheeks rosy from the cold night air. They fall slightly back behind the other boys and their conquests. Logan drapes an arm over her shoulder and lets his hand dip surreptitiously over one of her breasts, teasing the tightened knot he finds there.

He tastes like alcohol when he fucks her that night. They’re tired and drunk and their clothes lie in crumpled heaps in a line from the door to the bed. She falls asleep in his arms, satiated and happy. Life lived for another day.

He kisses her as much for him as for her. He loves her, but he doesn’t need her. They both pretend that’s not true.

***

In morning, she staggers out of bed, hair mussed and sticking up at odd angles. She follows the aroma of extra-strong coffee down the creaky wooden stairs to the kitchen and finds the Sunday papers on the table. Her coffee mug is on top of them, sitting in a shaft of sunlight.

Jess has read the paper while she was asleep and he’s doodled greylead drawings in the margins. He’s underlined articles he thinks she’ll be interested in, back and forward scribbles of silver attention. She’s always interested in the articles.

He comes in the door with warm croissants from the café down the street. She makes gimme hands at the paper bag and he holds it back, making her reach. He laughs at her but she doesn’t care, she has her food, her coffee and her penciled paper. Everything’s good with the world.

After breakfast they shower together in the cramped little bathroom. He soaps her back in long sensuous strokes. When he writes rude words in the bubbles on her back it tickles and she turns to swipe away his hand. 

They end up against the shower wall, cloaked in steam, their respective moans swallowed in the drum of the water.

***

Logan leaves diamonds under her pillow. She wakes up slowly in the dull light filtering through the blinds. She pulls his pillow towards her to hug in his absence and as her fingers slip under the cool cotton they touch something cold and metallic.

She smiles and pulls the bracelet out. It sparkles in the soft dawn shafts of sunlight and takes her breath away.

A post-it on the fridge lets her know he’ll be back from work for lunch and that he misses her. Dinner tonight at restaurant of her choice, just let him know and he’ll make reservations. 

She spends the morning studying economic theory and listening for the elevator doors opening in the corridor. He arrives home for lunch with sandwiches and coffee from the deli downstairs. 

They only have half an hour and the food lies forgotten on the kitchen bench as he takes her up against the pool table. She perches on the dark oak edge of the table, hands clutching his back, the diamond bracelet glittering on her wrist.

***

When neither of them feels like doing any of the things they should be doing, work and study seeming much too mundane, they like to spend the day in the old and used bookshops hidden around the city.

They sit facing each other, cross-legged among the musty aisles browsing and reading whatever has taken their fancy. Jess mocks her choices in literature and then promises earnestly to read them when she pouts at him.

He appears from behind some shelves with something _she absolutely, must read._ She points to the stack of books next to her that she’s collected for him to read. She gets excited when she finds something she’s been searching for and he agrees with everything she says and rubs the smear of dust off her cheek.

They spend too much money on their treasures and wander home, book corners threatening to poke holes in the plastic bags. They pick up Indian food along the way and spend the evening eating on the wooden floor of the living room reading bits and pieces of prose at each other. 

She’s spicy when he kisses her, spread out on the Oriental rug, surrounded by opened books. He leads her up the stairs to bed. She follows sleepily, mumbling lines at him from the passage in the book she refused to put down.

He coaxes her interest from the book with his mouth.

***

They head into New York for the night. Logan’s dressed in suit and tie and she keeps glancing at him with a little shiver of knowledge that he’s _hers_. They play music up loud in the back of the limo and wind the windows down to see the city lights.

He takes her to the opera and he smiles at her childlike innocence as she peers over the balcony in rapt attention. 

During intermission they run into friends of his parents and get stuck making small talk in the red velvet lobby. She pretends she’s a seasoned opera watcher, and tries to imitate their talk. Logan smiles disarmingly and knows that they walk away thinking he and Rory are a ‘charming young couple’.

The lights flicker and they haven’t yet made it to the bar. He convinces her to skip the second half and he slips the barman a fifty to give them a bottle of chilled champagne.

They get drunk in the back of the limo on the way home, giggling and proclaiming silly things about conquering the world. She slips him out of his jacket and tie and they have awkward, gasping sex across the backseat.

***

  
_That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call 'free will' is your mind's freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character._   


  
**Ayn Rand, (1905 – 1982)**   



End file.
